For yourself or the critters, try vegan living

It's not worth trying to persuade anyone to become vegan, for a couple of very good reasons: One, it's a losing battle, and two, it's far from certain that a diet with no animal products is best for everyone.

It's increasingly evident, however, that a part-time vegan diet -- one that emphasizes minimally processed plant food at the expense of everything else -- is the direction that will most benefit human health, increase animal welfare and reduce environmental impact. The remaining challenge, an undeniably big one, is to figure out how to make such a diet, which you might also call "flexitarian," the standard.

My own diet, which I call Vegan Before 6, is one way of tackling part-time veganism, but it isn't the only way. An intelligent adaptation of the Mediterranean diet, one of the popular "fast today, feast tomorrow" diets or even a so-called paleo diet -- one that stresses vegetables rather than animal products -- can put you on the right track.

As can this: a day of your choosing when you just go vegan.

There are true vegans who will say that part-time veganism is a little-bit-pregnant kind of thing; that is, impossible. But since the word means a diet without animal products, it can be used to describe something as part-time as a meal: A salad is, after all, a vegan meal.

Many cooked dishes that contain animal products can be and traditionally have been made without them, usually out of want. The problem for most people in developed countries is not a lack of opportunity to eat animal products but a superabundance.

It isn't as if vegetables are in short supply. Yes, local or organic produce is expensive (and so inconveniently seasonal!). But if you are going to eat it, now is your chance.

To me, the period between Labor Day and Thanksgiving is the best time of year to cook -- warm enough to grill and cool enough to braise, with the farmers' market still an absolute paradigm of abundance.

When fruits and vegetables are at their best, they give you insight into how the vegan thing can work for you, if only for a day. And given a moderate degree of freshness, most conventional vegetables from ordinary supermarkets can be made to taste good when gardens go dormant.

Plant-based meals contain more than vegetables, of course. Stock the pantry with good grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, oils, vinegars and other classic condiments, and you're set to make an infinite number of dishes that don't ruffle a single animal's feathers, hide or fin.

The options are infinite: I love jook for breakfast, as well as more conventional porridge (or mush) or something more modern, like quinoa cooked in almond milk. Chopped salad may have become a cliché, but there may not be a better vegan lunch (you might try one with a Thai- or Japanese-flavored dressing for variety). A snack can, of course, be as simple as popcorn jazzed up with nuts and raisins.

Dinner? I could live on pasta with vegetables for weeks. You might try it, if only for a day.

Last modified: October 8, 2013
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